Tested against octave-2.1.53 and octave-2.1.40.  Many functions will 
also work on earlier versions of Octave.  Use make -k to build what
functions can be built and ignore the rest.

*** WARNING *** if installing in a user directory, octave may crash
immediately on startup.  Either install into a system directory, or
remove the comm/PKG_ADD and sparse/PKG_ADD from the install directory
(octave-2.1.49 on RedHat 7.3 exhibits this problem).

See <a href="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/octave/octave-forge/RELEASE-NOTES?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain">RELEASE-NOTES</a> for a summary of all releases.

See <a href="http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/octave/octave-forge/ChangeLog?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain">ChangeLog</a> for details of every change.

2004-02-11 ===================================================================

Extends support forward to octave 2.1.53 for all oct-files.  Improved 
build environment and better testing.  We still need more tests!  If 
you need a function and don't see any test cases in it, add some and 
send them our way.  See 'help test' for details.

Changes
  
  - rand/randn: generates a different random number sequence from before.

New functions

  - anovan: analysis of variance
  - append_save: add a variable to a save file
  - assert: now supports structure arrays and cell arrays
  - BFGSMin: alternative to bfgs minimizer
  - conv2nan: 2-D convolution which ignores missing data
  - convhull/convhulln: now allows direct control of qhull parameters
  - csape: support n=3 case --- need to verify it is correct
  - dxfwrite: output plot to DXF format (AutoCAD)
  - fail: checks if code fails with a given error message
  - galois: load/save support
  - gpick: alternative to ginput
  - imread: now supports 16-bit grayscale
  - irsa_*: irregularly sampled data analysis functions
  - map: apply a function across all elements of a cell array
  - mex: initial support for structures
  - pngread/pngwrite: direct access to libpng
  - quadl: improved adaptive quadrature routine
  - rand/randn: faster and now supports for nD arrays
  - sort: fast sort based on python's timsort
  - sprandn: random sparse matrix filled with normally distributed values
  - str2double: convert string to double
  - struct: now creates structure arrays
  - toggle_grace_use: use grace plotting package rather than gnuplot
  - xmlwrite: save data to xml format

Plus the usual bug fixes and documentation updates.

2003-06-02 for Octave 2.1.36 and up ==========================================

* Extended support backward to octave 2.1.36 and forward to octave 2.1.49
  for all oct-files.  Some scripts make use of features only available in
  more recent versions of Octave.

* Communications: 
  - sqrt over Galois field
  - BCH code, modulator
  - bug fixes and documentation improvements

* Image:
  - added rotate_scale() 

* Optimization:
  - added Nick Higham's adsmax, mdsmax nmsmax for fmins
  - lp() fix range error

* Plotting:
  - surf()/surfc() support gnuplot 3.8i shaded surfaces
  - added peaks()
  - legend() inside/ouside/boxon/boxoff/right/left

* Signal Processing 
  - added freqs, invfreqs, invfreqz
  - return statespace and laplacian IIR filters (butter, cheby1, cheby2, ellip)
  - fixed aryule() to return the correct filter

* Statistics: 
  - added normplot()
  - scatter() optimization

* Sparse:
  - added concatenation functions spvcat() and sphcat()

* Symbolic: 
  - added poly2sym, sym2poly, numden, findsymbols, findsym, symlsolve, 
    symfsolve, syminfo
  - subs() accepts cell arrays

* TSA/NaN:
  - many bug fixes and documentation improvements

* Miscellaneous:
  - added cellstr()
  - fieldnames() now returns cell array
  - listen() bugfixes
  - ellipke() supports m < 0
  - deal() now supports [a,b] = deal(b,a)
  - dlmread() converted to C++ for speed and more flexible input

* administration: 
  - target specific build instructions (MacOSX, windows, Irix)

2003-02-22 for Octave 2.1.45 =================================================

* Updates for octave 2.1.45

* Parallel: Light weight parallel programming added but flagged NOINSTALL.

* Communications: add galois field functions and others

* Signal Processing: add convmtx and dftmtx

* Geometry: add (poor) griddata/tsearch support --- please improve!!

* VRML: new options 'z(grey|rb|col)' for vmesh() and
  vrml_surf(). Fixes and improvements to many functions.

* NaN: enhanced cov/covm, NaN arithmetic fixes 

* TSA: bug fix (matlab 5.3 bug)

* Sparse: add spstats and x.^a, more robust

* Base functions: add fileparts, filesep, char, dos; improve dlmread

* Function overloading: dispatch() lets you call tf rather than f if the
  first argument to f is t.

* Octave server: listen() sets up a socket to receive octave commands from
  a particular host --- please improve!!

Many fixes, compatibility improvements and better Windows support.

Thanks, all!

	
2002-11-30 for Octave 2.1.40 =================================================

New functions

	* general/ndims: compatibility function
        * image/imginfo: determines size of image using 'convert'
	* image/colfilt: image block filtering function
	* image/im{rotate,translate,shear}: image transformations
	* miscellaneous/inline: generate a function from an expression
        * miscellaneous/slurp_file: loads a file into a string
        * miscellaneous/{rotv,rotparams}: parameterize 3D rotation matrices
	* plot/contour.f: filled contours
	* sparse/{sprand,spdiags,issparse}: sparse functions
	* specfun/lambertw: Lambert's W function: x=w(x)*exp(w(x))
	* specfun/betaln: log beta
	* splines/pchip: Piecewise Cubic Hermitian Interpolating Polynomial
	* statistics/{boxplot,scatter}: statistical plots
	* symbolic/{cheb,chebwin}: Dolph-Chebyshev windows
        * vrml/vmesh: 3D visualization of a surface
        * vrml/*: represent and show 3D objects as VRML code (needs FreeWRL)

Extended interfaces

	* audio/au{load,save}: support floating point .wav formats
	* image/colorgradient: allow instantaneous transitions (weight 0)
	* optim/wpolyfit: option to fit through origin
	* signal/{ellip,ellipord}: compatible interfac
	* sparse/spy: accept dense matrices
	* strings/mat2string: accept [] and complex
	* symbolic/*: relational operators
	* time/datestr: more format codes; handle vectors of dates

Changed interfaces

	* image/bwlabel: C++ version---may be different from m-file interface
	* extra/ode: moved from v1.06 to v1.14
	* optim/*: unified interface supporting options
	* optim/wpolyfit: don't return yf
	* optim/wpolyfit: return row vectors for compatibility with polyfit
	* signal/nellip: replaced by ellip, ellipord
	* OCTAVE_FORGE_VERSION is now an ordered integer: yyyymmdd
	* FIXES/fsolve: removed because it hasn't been updated to 2.1.40


extra/tsa

	* significance test and confidence intervals for PACF
	* added histogram functions for multicolumn data
	* support for new releases of octave and matlab
	* bug fixes

extra/NaN

	* added TRIMEAN, NORMPDF, NORMCDF and NORMRND
	* extended NANTEST
	* significance test and confidence intervals for CORRCOEF
	* faster RANKS
	* support for new releases of octave and matlab

Internal changes

	* extra/symband: eigenvector bug removed
	* io/dlmread: returned matrix was transposed
	* general/rat: display 1/0 for infinity
	* plot/ginput: m-file version based on grab.cc
	* plot/legend: give gnuplot time to respond to parameter request
	* signal/{buttord,fir1}: bug fixes
	* sparse/spy: prettier graph
	* gcc 3.2 updates
	* octave 2.1.40 updates
	* remove functions and fixes that are now in octave

Administration

        * vrml/doc: LaTeX tutorial on 3D visualization tools 
	* Octave for Windows FAQ updates
	* INSTALL.WINDOWS installation notes
	* support for static build under Windows

2002-05-09 for Octave 2.1.31 =================================================

This is a bug fix release.  Many thanks to the good folks at Debian for
finding the portability problems.

New functions

	* miscellaneous/OCTAVE_FORGE_VERSION
	* extra/tsa/durlev
	* strings/base64encode
	* signal/guasswin
	* image/colfilt

Changes

	* audio/sound: uses ssh rather than rsh for remote audio
	* testfun/assert: use tol>0 for relative error, tol<0 for absolute err
	* optim/bfgs: new interface
	* optim/minimize: ndiff, jac, hess and ihess options
	* NaN/sumskipnan: additional outputs
	* NaN/*: bug fixes

Bug fixes

	* signal/triang: for n=2, peak=1 at the virtual center of the window
	* signal/gaussian: now returns a symmetric window
	* now compiles on most Debian systems which support Octave.
	* updated doc strings, tests

Administration

	* make check and make icheck added.  Only supports the compiled
	  functions at the moment, but it is a start.

